Hagerty, Inc. Q1 FY2023 Earnings Call

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss Hagerty's results for the first quarter of 2023. I'm joined this morning by McKeel Hagerty, Chief Executive Officer; and Patrick McClymont, Chief Financial Officer. During this morning's conference call, we will refer to an accompanying presentation that is available on Hagerty's Investor Relations section of the company's corporate website. Our earnings release, accompanying slides and letter to stockholders covering this period are also posted on the IR website. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial metrics. Forward-looking statements, including statements about our expected future business and financial performance, are not promises or guarantees of future performance. They are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from our expectations. For a discussion of material risks and important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our filings with the SEC. The appendix of the presentation also contains reconciliations of our non-GAAP metrics to the most directly comparable GAAP measures that are further supplemented by this morning's filings.

Thanks, Jay, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join our first quarter 2023 earnings call. Over the last 6 months, we have been working diligently to reengineer our business processes with the goal of delivering high rates of bottom-line growth, fueled by the combination of sustained top-line momentum and significantly improved margins. Patrick will cover the steps we have taken in more detail, but I couldn't be prouder of the Hagerty team and what we have accomplished over the first three months of 2023. Slide 3 of our investor deck shares some of the key first quarter highlights, including total revenue gains of 30% in the quarter, powered by written premium growth of 18%. We anticipated a strong start to the year, and while the first quarter is our seasonally smallest, contributing roughly 20% of the full year's revenue, we are encouraged by the solid consumer interest in Hagerty's suite of products. In our risk-taking entity, Hagerty Reinsurance, premiums jumped 32% due to the growth in written premium and our increased level of quota share of 80%. We have continued to assume more of the risk and premium associated with our strong and stable underwriting capabilities. Membership, marketplace and other revenue jumped 63%, fueled by a 22% increase in membership, $7 million of marketplace revenue, as seen on Slide 4, and a 32% increase in other revenue, including sponsorships. Our team continues to make steady progress with the State Farm integration, shown on Slide 5, both on the technology side and the people side as the teams prepare to begin writing new policies under the 10-year agreement later in 2023. In short, we have a powerful growth story, and our top-line momentum has continued into 2023. Over the last two calls, we have talked at length about our heightened focus on managing expenses in an uncertain economic environment. This cost discipline will help us deliver the profitability necessary to invest in our future growth ambitions, saving driving and fueling car culture for future generations. These efforts resulted in a significant inflection in our profit trajectory during the first quarter as we delivered positive adjusted EBITDA of $7 million, a $13 million improvement over the prior year’s period of a $6 million loss. We also announced an organizational restructuring in early April that should drive additional cost savings over the coming quarters. In short, our team is executing well on our profitable growth ambitions, and we are well positioned to deliver on our 2023 key initiatives shown on Slide 6; including, first, delivering high rates of revenue growth powered by sustained double-digit written premium gains and incremental revenue from membership and marketplace. We are reconfirming total revenue growth of 22% to 26% for the year. Second, continuing our evolution into a vertically integrated insurance business. And third, significantly improving the profitability of our business through cost containment and operational efficiencies. We believe we are well on track to deliver the upgraded profit outlook for 2023 adjusted EBITDA of $55 million to $75 million. Our teams have mobilized around this short list of priorities, and we feel confident about the pivot to profitability that we have begun to deliver in 2023. Let me now turn the call over to Patrick to cover the financials in more detail.

Thanks, McKeel, and good morning, everyone. Let's dig into the strong results from the first quarter shown on Slides 7 and 8. As McKeel mentioned, we delivered 30% growth in total revenue, including strong gains in core insurance, marketplace and membership. Written premium increased 18%, in line with our expectations for a very strong start to the year. Hagerty's brand strength can be seen in the 88% retention and quality of written premium growth, with equal contributions from new business count and rate increases. Commission and fee revenue grew 19% to $75 million due to the strong growth in written premiums. Membership, marketplace and other revenue increased 63% to $27 million, benefiting from an increase in total paid members, a transition to a single-tier membership at $70, and an additional $7 million in marketplace revenue. Earned premium grew 32% to $117 million, driven by new written premium growth and another 10-point increase in our contractual reinsurance quota share to 80%. Our loss ratio remained stable in the quarter at 41%. Turning to profitability, shown on Slide 9, we reported a fourth quarter operating loss of $16 million, compared to a loss of $13 million in the prior period. This operating loss included a $6 million restructuring charge related to the reduction in force that we implemented in the quarter, which drove margins higher as well as reduced hiring plans and other cost containment initiatives. Focus areas included reducing the total fixed cost to serve our customers, including the member service center, underwriting and claims as well as refining the infrastructure behind our cost to acquire new customers through our direct and wholesale channels. This restructuring is the continued evolution in our business model that we embarked on 6 months ago to drive significantly improved profitability during the coming years and should result in additional annualized cost savings of $20 million to $25 million, of which we expect to realize roughly $15 million over the balance of 2023. Operating loss also incorporates $4 million of accelerated amortization from the write-down of the majority of our media assets in the quarter related to lower-than-anticipated advertising revenue. While we expect less direct monetization from Hagerty Media, we will continue to leverage this high-quality content as an effective way to bring in new customers and drive engagement across the Hagerty ecosystem. Net loss for the quarter was $15 million, compared to a net gain of $16 million a year earlier. The year-over-year change in net loss was primarily driven by the $32 million swing in the fair value adjustment related to our private and public warrants. GAAP loss per share was $0.06 based on our 83 million weighted average shares of Class A stock outstanding. Our adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was positive $7 million, a $13 million improvement over the $6 million loss in the prior year period. The year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA is a result of continued growth, compared with our disciplined approach to cost and focused initiatives, and we expect to see this improved trajectory continue over the balance of 2023. Let me now move on to our 2023 outlook shown on Slide 10. As McKeel mentioned, given the strong start to the year, we are reconfirming our outlook for total revenue growth of 22% to 26% powered by written premium growth of 11% to 13%. Our rate increases are locked and loaded, and Hagerty's brand is on track to add another 250,000 members in 2023, creating a growing base of auto enthusiasts to provide products and services. We now expect full-year adjusted EBITDA of $55 million to $75 million, equivalent to 6% to 8% margins. This increased outlook incorporates the additional expected savings from the recent restructuring and should accelerate our return to double-digit EBITDA margins.

Yes. Thank you. Good morning. Any change in the State Farm timing or momentum this quarter compared to what you might have discussed on the 4Q call?

Thanks, Mark. It's a great question. And we're still feeling quite confident that we're going to be launching in our four states yet this year. We were code complete on the integration between the technical teams in April, and we're continuing down the path. So really no change. We're going to be up and running this year, in the second half of the year with those four states. The intention between the teams is to get going and keep the momentum accelerating. State Farm continues to be very committed to the program. The teams are excited about it, and they continue growing their own business, so that will be good for us.

And then, I see your loss ratio very steady. Any impact here from inflation? Could you just talk about the kind of the price versus inflation dynamic as you're seeing it play out?

Yes. Mark, we talked about this before. Last year, we were seeing a tricky combination of some increased costs in a few pieces of loss cost. But we've really seen some nice stabilization this year. Some of it due to, of course, rates coming through, but also just a combination of valuations and managing expenses through the claims process seem to be working very effectively. So we're feeling really quite good about our targets here.

Yes. And you gave a pretty good range of EBITDA guidance, $55 million to $75 million. What needs to happen in order to hit the higher end of that range? What are some of the variables that you need to see play out in order to do, again, the high end of that range?

Sure. It's Patrick, and Mark, good to talk to you again. We feel good about the range. We feel confident in sort of the midpoint of the range right now. I would say that we've started the year from a revenue standpoint, particularly written premium-related revenue, with a little bit of wind behind our sails. It was a good first quarter. We feel good about that. Not enough that we're going to declare that we need to move the guidance, but it does give us confidence that we should be within that range. On a go-forward basis, it continues to deliver written premium growth, continuing to deliver new customers, both of which are off to a good start so far this year. First quarter is seasonally slow, but the haymaking quarters are the second and third quarters, so we've got to keep pushing that advantage. We're doing everything possible to make sure that we're being very focused on costs. We did a cost exercise at the end of last year. We did another one during the first quarter. We're trying to insulate the P&L and increase the likelihood that we hit our plan, which would put us right near the midpoint of that range. I think it's lining up pretty well right now.

Good morning. This is Sid on for Greg. Just wanted to go back to the underwriting results. I just wanted, I guess, clarify your comments to see if you saw any changes in severity or frequency in the first quarter compared to the end of the year last year?

I think the better way for us to talk about it would be relative to what we've seen in other first quarters. Keep in mind that our business is so seasonal, and these wonderful cars are typically resting during the first quarter of the year in most places. When we look at it relative to last year and the year before, we're kind of right in the middle, consistent with what we had predicted in terms of loss ratio. Our mix is heavily skewed towards the property side of things, physical damage as opposed to liability. That's coming in line with what we had expected. You should assume that we're off to an as-expected start to the year, consistent with historical results.

New to the story here. It looks like marketplace is growing nicely. Just at a broad level, could you maybe talk about customer acquisition strategy within this segment and how you can increase market share going forward?

Thank you, and nice to talk to you. Our marketplace consists of three distinct groups. We have our live auction strategy, which is really exciting and that launched midyear last year with a couple of really fun and exciting sales that delivered great top and bottom-line results. That's very much a client-based business. When we acquired Broad Arrow Group, there's a team that knows these clients, they're out there working with them to acquire cars, helping them sell cars, and helping them find cars. Many transactions take place at live auctions. There's also a robust private sale aspect to that when a customer wants something done in between a live auction. We're off to a great start there. We're really excited that we are the official partner with Porsche North America to do their 75th anniversary sale in June in Atlanta at the Porsche Experience Center. We just had our Amelia Island auction a couple of months ago, and then we'll have our Monterey sales. We'll likely build out a couple more events during the year. This client-focused approach is key. The digital auction strategy is the most scalable piece of our marketplace strategy, and we are just coming out of the beta test mode. There are a number of great digital platforms available for buying and selling these types of cars. We believe ours is differentiated because we emphasize the trust and transparency that we have with the brand, delivering on valuations, making sure information is available, ensuring that when people buy something, they really get what they're paying for. So we will begin to scale up that business in the coming months, quarters, and years ahead. Our main marketing group comprises just short of 800,000 or so paid members. We're working with them to help them buy and sell cars, whether at live auctions or through digital channels. We're also using our social channels and other marketing strategies to acquire new customers. One significant point is that within the last year, our members bought and sold over 300,000 cars, valuing over $12 billion in transactions, and that's which we're targeting first.

Great. Thanks for that. And then, just given the cost initiatives you've taken recently, do you see any challenges in maintaining that Net Promoter Score going forward?

Net Promoter Score, while not a financial metric, is very important to us. We believe it's one of the most important metrics to compare customer perceptions. The fact that we've held a high Net Promoter Score of 82 to 83 means that most of our interactions with clients lead to them recommending us to their friends. We've seen our Net Promoter Score remain strong heading into this year alongside our growth. Importantly, with our cost-saving initiatives and restructuring, we haven’t limited our ability to serve frontline members. We've focused more on supervisory positions and new hiring strategies. Our focus will remain on the member; we need that Net Promoter Score to support our growth.

We've actually analyzed the data. This was previously a profitable company with high single-digit to low double-digit profit margins 8, 9, 10 years ago and was still in the 80s from an NPS perspective. There's a keen focus on delivering value for the customer and celebrating that customer. What we've really focused on is the infrastructure. The frontline delivering for the customer doesn’t change. It's how we operate behind the scenes; that's where we've focused on to deliver efficiencies.

Any reason why the 18% growth in premium growth should not carry over through the rest of the year? Your guidance for the full year is implying a step down to about 11% to 12% for the subsequent quarters this year.

It's due to seasonality and how rate increases flow through. We began the year with some positive momentum, better than expected for written premium growth, though still in line with our original estimates. However, seasonal influences from renewal timing mean we expect to have that 11% to 13% range. I feel comfortable with the midpoint of that range and hope to maintain some positive momentum.

Got it. And then, just moving to the loss ratio. Does the 41% this quarter reflect the higher liability that you set up last year?

Yes. Last year, we took an increase in reserves for liability. That reflected the inflationary environment and social inflation. That logic is baked into our loss ratio accruals. We did take rate increases as well, which were heavily focused on the liability side, effectively offsetting that increase and bringing us back to the low 40s as the right range for our business.

Understood. And then the last one for me. In the press release, you provided a breakdown of the outlook which is very helpful. I was curious about the one line there, other income, where you're projecting about $10 million of income for the year. Can you talk about what's in that line? Thank you.

It's essentially the earnings on our cash. We have both our cash and restricted cash. Some of that's in Hagerty Re and some within the MGA entity; for the most part, it's invested at the very short end of the curve. With the current interest rates, we've adjusted our investments, leading us to earn significantly more than before.

Thank you, operator, and thank you to One Team Hagerty for your hard work and dedication. We've had to make some tough decisions over the last 6 months, including the recently announced restructuring. I believe we have never been better positioned to capitalize on the latent growth from Hagerty's Affinity business model. Our rapidly growing customer base creates the scale benefits allowing us to continually invest in products and services that help auto enthusiasts enjoy their passion for fun cars and driving. Importantly, we're executing with the discipline that will create the profits needed to reinvest and sustain these high rates of growth over the coming years. Thank you to our stakeholders for your continued support. One more item of note: our Greenwich, Connecticut Concours d'Elegance is fast approaching, and we plan on hosting an event for investors on the afternoon of Friday, June 2 in Greenwich. We look forward to the opportunity to spend more time with you in person. So be on the lookout for more details from us. Until then, never stop driving.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.